Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Big Deal - Mergers & Acquisitions in the Digital Age by Bruce Wasserstein

For some time, I have been searching for a book that gives a good overview on the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in business. For me, it is out of professional interest and the curiosity in understanding how the real big deals are being done in the US and beyond. Bruce Wasserstein's "Big Deal: Mergers & Acquisitions in the Digital Age" will not disappoint. The writer of the book, Bruce Wasserstein is a practitioner of mergers and acquisitions in Wall Street and have facilitated many big and interesting deals and is currently the CEO and Chairman of Lazard LLC. In fact, it was through a gathering among my business partners that I discovered the book. While on a business trip to Indonesia, I spent some time reading the book and learned a lot about a business which I have interests into. It is definitely a few notches better than the book "Barbarians at the Gate"; which was recommended to me by people involved in M&A activity. For those who wanted a good guide on how M&A have evolved over the past few centuries, good case studies on the strategic challenge in the M&A world, and a guide for those who are involved in the business, this is definitely the book that you must read. I will talk a bit more about the themes that revolve around the book as I move along.

Guanxi - The story of Microsoft Research Centre in China

I started reading the book "Guanxi - Microsoft, China and Bill Gates' Plan to Win the Road Ahead" after listening to a podcast from MIT (u can subscribe the podcast for free in iTunes U) featuring a talk by both authors Robert Buderi and Gregory T. Huang. In this book, they told the story about how they started working on this project, and talked about the rise of the Microsoft Research Asia (research centre in China) within a few years. The book offers a behind-the-scenes tale about how Bill Gates courted the Chinese to develop a relationship for Microsoft with China within the span of the last two decades. What I thought was fascinating about this book is that after the emergence of the lab as a successful research centre for computer science (with an investment over 100 million US$), the battle for both talent and the Chinese market has just begun with the entrance of Google.

The Business of Politics and Ethnicity

My colleague, Wayne Soon from Singapore Angle, has recommended me an interesting book over a cup of coffee last weekend. He told me that this book is so good that he could not take it off his hand. After reading it, I cannot but help to agree with him. Of course, being immersed as both a researcher and practitioner in business and entrepreneurship (otherwise, as Joseph A. Schumpeter termed it "Creative Destruction"), the book "The Business of Politics and Ethnicity: A History of The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry" (published by NUS Press) by Sikko Visscher (University of Amsterdam), offers a pair of lens to the social and political history of Singapore from a different angle. Strangely, this angle come from a business entity which was formed in 1906. The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) is a leading cultural and economic organization dedicated to promoting the interests of the Chinese business community. We often hear so much about the government promoting entrepreneurship lately but yet so little about the world of outstanding business leaders and ex-presidents of SCCCI in Singapore from the past to the present,  from Tan Kah Kee (a well-known Chinese industrialist and philanthropist or "Henry Ford of Malaysia" in 1920s), Lee Kong Chian (Chinese businessman and philanthropist who started the Lee Foundation that I am indebted to for my PhD scholarship) to Wee Cho Yaw (incumbent Chairman of UOB bank).  So, I offer you a glimpse of the book after reading this treatise about an interesting civic institution that very few younger generation of Singapore Chinese Entrepreneurs (most of us are western educated) know very little about.